1. Field of Disclosure
This disclosure relates to digital images and in particular to selecting an image similar to another image.
2. Description of the Related Art
The ability to select an image similar to a second image from a large database has a wide variety of applications, such as searching-by-example within image sets, example-based image compression, and texture synthesis. In some instances, a database may contain millions of images, increasing the computational complexity required to select a similar image. In each of these applications, selecting the image most similar to a target image from a distributed database of images as efficiently as possible is desirable. However, processing images in large image databases is computationally demanding and requires large amounts of bandwidth and memory resources. Further, comparing image file information between a target image and every image in a database requires even greater processing power, and does not account for varying image formats or resolutions. Thus, selecting an image similar to a second image is both difficult and resource-demanding.